facebook

You know how sometimes you’re working on something and no matter how much effort you put into it, it doesn’t seem to want to resolve itself? Then some online guru tells you that in order to solve a problem, sometimes you need to step back from it and look at the whole picture, focus on the forest, because your nose is buried too deep in the tree, and you wish you could take a step back…and you promise you would take a step back, if only you could solve it…

Well, take that break. It does work. Sometimes. When you’re consciously not thinking about the problem, your subconscious mind back there is working. Plus, sometimes it works as a valid excuse for procrastinating. “I’m taking a break so my subconscious mind can work on the problem.”

I remember an exam I sat for once. A question annoyed me during the exam because I felt like the answer was lodged in my brain somewhere, but for some reason that section was inaccessible. Needless to say, I submitted the exam, went to my room, went to sleep and when I woke up…seriously, the moment I woke up, I found myself thinking about the solution. “Way overdue…way overdue…”

Mental note: next time you get stuck in an exam, put your head on the desk and take a nap. Just don’t take my word for it.

So my friend and I were talking about Facebook today. I have personally developed an unfathomable aversion to it, which is why I deactivated my account even though it used to boost my blog stats. But seriously, how many of us, on some subconscious level, use facebook (and/or twitter) to feed the narcissistic part of us? The part that loves the attention and comments and the likes.

Personally I like twitter because it allows me to follow ideas and not people. I’ve written about it before here.

Last but not least, if you’ve read this post to the very end then you’re disproving statistics on StatisticBrain.com that say that the average attention span has dropped from 12 s in 2000 to 8 s in 2012. Compare that with the reported information that the attention span of a gold fish is 9 s. Of course, anyone would eye that sort of information with skepticism (especially if you’ve taken a statistics course where you learn that the numbers can say anything you want them to if you know how to play with them).

This is a common scenario. You want something from someone urgently so you send them an email. They don’t reply and then you decide to go to them and ask, “Why haven’t you replied?”

They tell you, “Your email must have been lost in the middle of the 500 unread emails I have.”

The only reaction to this statement is to raise your eyebrows in suspicion.

a) we all come from the internet age. Okay some of us might not have been born in the middle of it, but at some point or another we did make the transition from the paper era to the computer era.

b) We know what constitutes a large portion of these emails;

1) They are facebook notifications

2) They are twitter notifications

3) They are daily or weekly digests of a blog we follow

4) Multiply point (3) by the number of blogs we follow

5) Forwards and other types of spam.

6) Work-related emails where you’ve been in the conversation loop since forever but you don’t need to open or respond to them

Therefore, most likely than not, these unread emails may remain unread, FOREVER. And for a very good reason, too. While the internet is supposed to help us make communications easier and faster, it has also succeeded in giving some people a truthful excuse to evade work. Next time you hear the “it got lost in the middle of the other 500 emails” ask yourself what’s the true message behind that statement?

I have to admit that my relationship with my phone is pretty much complicated. The main reason is that I use it for everything except to make calls, which is funny considering the basic function of a telephone is to make calls. I don’t know why I don’t like talking on the phone much. My friends already know that I am not much of a caller. I mostly receive calls, and except for a few people, I tend to end conversations quickly.

Maybe it’s because my favorite mode of communication happens through writing (message, whatsapp, emails, twitter, facebook…). But maybe it goes deeper than that. When I was in school, my fellow schoolmates used to call me only for help in their schoolwork, and it used to really depress me. I would complain to my diary that they’re using me and that they never even bother to tell me if they’re hanging out or something. So basically, the ringing phone was an indication for “School SOS.” And when it was exceedingly silent, the phone used to act as a reminder that I didn’t have many true friends and that I was a “loser” (in high school terminology), though now I just have to correct that by replacing the ‘s’ with an ‘n’.

But as my close friends would testify, I sorta make up for my lack of interest in making calls with my obsession with social media – which is why I have a phone in the first place. Since social media/emails requires me to type everything out instead of talk, they’re my favorite mode of keeping in touch with people, and of course, the fact that there is a wordpress application for the iphone is always a plus since I stay up-to-date with the interaction on my blog, which is why a phone like the one below would never have cut it…#ThankyouSteve

Remember those phones? I don’t remember my first phone, but my bro had this one for ages…

So the year is coming to an end, and I would like to take a few minutes to thank everybody who has been visiting this blog. With all the stuff online fighting for your attention, it is an honor that you’ve been spending some time here, so thank you very much. Thank you for your comments, likes, shares and retweets. I’ve been going through some of the comments that my friends have been sending me, and there seems to be a pattern, can you find it?

Person (A) on Facebook says, “long time no talk, but recently started reading more of ur writings and they are really good. i just want to thank you that some of ur writings i find them helpful esp to tough times in life. keep up writing and think of colletcting ur blog posts and put them in a book.

Person (B) shared my stuff on twitter, with the message, “write a book someday :-)”

Person (C) on Linkedin said, “Write something, like a novel or maybe a children’s book for starters (JK Rowling!)”

So until I get to that, I’m listing below some of the top posts for my ahechoes.wordpress.com compiled for new readers. Some of these were actually published in 2011 but they still made the “most read” list of 2012. Enjoy!